ces seem to demand it. His
plan is to drift with the currents, and the evidence for the currents
moving in the direction he wishes to go is as follows:

The great drift of polar water southward along the east coasts of
Labrador and of Greenland has been known from the beginning of
Atlantic navigation, and the icebergs and floes carried along are
serious obstacles to the shipping of the North Atlantic. It is
estimated that between Greenland and Spitzbergen about eighty or
ninety cubic miles of water pour southward every day. The current,
like that down Smith Sound, flows from the north, but the water cannot
originate there. There is a very slight northward extension of the
Gulf Stream drift along the west coasts of Spitzbergen and Greenland,
but the main drift of North Atlantic water from the southward sets
round the North Cape of Norway, keeping the sea free from ice all the
year round. It is felt in the Kara Sea, and as a north-easterly stream
along the coast of Novaya Zemlya. It is difficult to estimate the
volume of this drift, but from certain observations made by the
Norwegian Government it seems to be about sixty cubic miles per day.
There is a current running on the whole northward from the Pacific
through Bering Strait with a volume of perhaps fifteen cubic miles a
day, and in addition there is the volume of perhaps two cubic miles
daily poured out during summer by the great American and Siberian
rivers. This water is fresh and warm, and accumulating near shore in
autumn it gives rise to the ice-free border which let the "Vega" slip
round the north of Asia. Even where the sea is covered with floating
ice, there are perceptible currents, and the ice-pack is never at
rest.

Since the vast body of water north of 80 deg. between Franz-Josef Land
and Greenland is streaming from the north, and since it must be derived
somehow from water which comes from the south, it is evident that
north-flowing currents of considerable power must exist in the Arctic
Basin. Parry in his splendid voyage of 1827 spent months in sledging
northward on a vast ice-floe which all the while was drifting south
faster than the dogs could drag the sledges northward.

This polar current is the exit by which Doctor Nansen intends to
leave the Polar Basin. It is a current which strews the coast of
Greenland with Siberian and North American driftwood, all coming
from the north, perhaps across the pole itself. Mud containing
microscopic shells w